Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
Date of Degree
2-2020
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
M.A.
Program
Liberal Studies
Advisor
Leah Anderst
Subject Categories
Film and Media Studies
Keywords
Orson Welles, The Other Side of the Wind, The Auteur Theory
Abstract
The release of The Other Side of the Wind calls into question some of the basic tenets of film theory and film academia in that it is a film that is essentially impossible to credit to a single auteur because of the death of its director decades before the film’s release. This thesis seeks to reconcile the fundamentals of the auteur theory, by returning to its origin in the pages of Cahiers du cinema and in the writing of Andrew Sarris, with this curious film object, credited by its distributor as a film by Orson Welles. Because an auteurist question is only one that can be resolved by an auteurist reading, this thesis travels the length of Welles’s filmography to attempt to create a composite image of what a film by Orson Welles is, and to compare this image to the released version of The Other Side of the Wind.
Recommended Citation
Sawyer, Hunter M., "“In the same figure, like the king that’s dead”: The Phantasmic Authorship of The Other Side of the Wind" (2020). CUNY Academic Works.
https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/3584